The occupational hazards of gay love

Friday

Feb 16, 2018 at 3:20 PMFeb 19, 2018 at 12:13 PM

Howard Karren

Released Jan. 30: “God’s Own Country.” If this superlatively beautiful British movie is any indication, we may have finally moved past the coming-out tale in experiencing same-sex romance. “God’s Own Country,” the feature film debut of Francis Lee as writer-director, is the story of Johnny, a young farmer in Yorkshire, an economically and climatically depressed region of northern England. Johnny works brutally hard, and he receives little warmth and uplift from his family and the bleak spring weather of the moors. He also happens to be gay, though his sexuality is only expressed in occasional, gruff encounters in the local pub after he gets drunk. That is, until Gheorghe, a handsome Romanian itinerant worker, arrives at the farm to help out. As luck (or hopeful storytelling) would have it, Gheorghe is also gay, and a lot more mature than Johnny, and the gist of the movie is how the seasoned Gheorghe brings the mulish Johnny out of his shell. It’s a fable of intimacy, and how two people can complement each other in love. And it’s so sensitively and authentically told, from the way it depicts the life of farmers and farmhands of the region — actually birthing and tending to animals — to the way it dissects its characters’ layers of emotional defense, it will disarm the most unsentimental of viewers. The cinematography takes unsaturated grays, blues and browns and makes them vivid and enveloping, and the acting of its two leads, Josh O’Connor as Johnny and Alec Secareanu as Gheorghe, never hits a false note. Premiering at Sundance and playing at the Provincetown International Film Festival last year, the movie has gone on to abundant critical acclaim around the world. Now it’s available on video or online. Don’t miss it.

Also released Jan. 30, in brief: “The Square,” a social satire about a controversial museum exhibit, directed by Ruben Östland (“Force Majeure”); “Professor Marston and the Wonder Women,” or: how the polyamorous psychologist William Marston came up with the cartoon character Wonder Woman in 1941; and “Last Flag Flying,” Richard Linklater’s film about Vietnam vets (Bryan Cranston, Laurence Fishburne and Steve Carell) who reune to bury one of their sons.

Released Feb. 6: “Tom of Finland.” The art of Tom of Finland is like a gay male leather version of sex comics such as Playboy’s “Little Annie Fanny”: men’s adult sexual characteristics (butts, phalluses, V-shaped torsos and Marlboro Man mugs) are so exaggerated that a disinterested observer might find them absurd and not even vaguely attractive. But to more than a few gay men of the pre-Stonewall and pre-AIDS eras, Tom of Finland’s cartoonish illustrations were magic: a genie-like liberation of porn-explicit lust. Unfortunately, this live-action film biography of Touko Laaksonen — the Finnish advertising illustrator who created Tom of Finland drawings under horrifically repressive conditions in his native country in the 1950s and ’60s and smuggled them abroad — is a mixed bag. Laaksonen’s years of struggle as a gay man in a closeted world are cogently dramatized and nicely performed (Pekka Strang, in the title role, is especially good), but his years of acceptance and eventual celebrity in the 1970s and ’80s, in which he experienced firsthand the blossoming of open gay life in California, are poorly written and too rushed and crammed with historical exposition. The first part is haunting and shot with flair, but the latter part resembles a banal TV movie, negating the value of the whole package. Director Dome Karukoski can be blamed for squandering a unique opportunity to bring an exotic treasure of gay culture into the culture at large. It’s not exactly awful, but it’s a shameful disappointment.

Released Feb. 6, in brief: “Suburbicon,” a dark comedy of suburban bigotry, starring Matt Damon, Julianne Moore and Oscar Isaac, directed by George Clooney and written by the Coen brothers; “LBJ,” with Woody Harrelson as the former president; and “A Bad Moms Christmas,” a raunchy new moms adventure, with Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, Susan Sarandon and Christine Baranski.

Released Feb. 13: “Roman J. Israel, Esq.” Promoted as a quirky character study with Denzel Washington at its center sporting a vintage Afro, bad suits and weird tics, “Roman J. Israel, Esq.” is actually much more powerful and serious: it’s a drama about an idealistic and brilliant lawyer who is pushed to the brink financially and falls into a moral abyss. Written and directed by Dan Gilroy, whose last film was the brilliant and disturbing “Nightcrawler,” featuring Jake Gyllenhaal as a maniacal TV news cameraman, “Roman J. Israel, Esq.” is a cerebral pressure-cooker of a movie. Israel has slaved away for decades at a small L.A. law firm serving criminal clients in the hopes of one day reforming the system of justice. He’s been living on a subsistence salary, and when his firm suddenly collapses, his rigid politics — a legal nerd’s version of ’70s black activism — prevent him from finding a new job. To women and younger activists he’s just a social anachronism, but his almost freak-like legal smarts make him valuable to a slick young hotshot played by Colin Farrell. Israel joins Farrell’s firm and gets swallowed up by his own disillusionment. He concocts a scheme to escape the cage of his own moral purity and succeeds, leading to consequences befitting a Greek tragedy or a play by Ibsen. Washington is marvelous: instead of chewing the scenery, he underplays Israel’s eccentricities and gives the character sharp wits and a fragile soul. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine another star of his caliber who could make such a character so convincing and human. “Roman J. Israel, Esq.” is a little too pat — the schematics of the plot recall “Michael Clayton,” which was written and directed by Gilroy’s brother, Tony — and a romantic subplot involving Israel and a young woman at a nonprofit (Carmen Ejogo) is too simple-minded. Even so, it’s an engaging, challenging film with a withering theme about the inevitability of corruption and martyrdom for the principled few.

Released Feb. 13, in brief: “Wonder,” the heartwarming story of August Pullman, a young boy with a disfigured face who gets mainstreamed in the fifth grade.

Original content available for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons license, except where noted.
Wicked Local Provincetown ~ P.O. Box 977 Provincetown, MA 02657 ~ Privacy Policy ~ Terms Of Service